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Rickety Cricket
Matthew "Rickety Cricket" Mara is a former classmate of the Gang. He is played by David Hornsby. He has steadily spiraled down over the years thanks to the actions of the Gang: leaving the priesthood, becoming homeless, various drug addictions (namely cocaine and crack), having his legs broken, having his throat slashed, and having the left side of his face covered in burns. He has been in love with Dee Reynolds his entire life and is often lured into schemes and traps by the Gang under the deception of getting a date with her. Early Life Cricket wore humiliating giant leg braces while he was in with the Gang. He had an enormous crush on ; she promised to kiss him if he ate a horse turd. After he ate the turd, she refused to kiss him since, as she says, "his breath smelled like shit." Mac and Dennis have been teabagging Cricket at every opportunity since high school. Dennis claims that he has a shoebox full of pictures of him and Mac doing this, and that pictures are surfacing on the Internet. Rickety Cricket is able to run very quickly, and jump high distances in a very athletic manner. He was able to easily evade Dennis and Mac when they were attempting to manhunt him. Even after his legs were broken by the mob and had healed. Season Two ]] Rickety was a priest and still harbored his high-school crush on Sweet Dee. They tried to get him to bless an image of the Virgin Mary that had appeared in the bar. Rickety agreed to quit the priesthood for Dee, but she was only flirting with him because Frank insinuated that she couldn't will him into blessing the water stain. Season Three He later became homeless and developed a cocaine addiction through and who were trying to avoid getting whacked by the mob. The mob went after him instead and broke his legs. When accidentally puts up as the prize for a dance marathon contest, Cricket enters, hoping to win for revenge. He has bionic legs (as a result of the beating he took from the mob mentioned above) but they fail him and he loses the contest. Season Four He was hunted for sport by and during their attempts at being manhunters. They lured him in to Paddy's by telling him Dee wanted to date him and gave him a head start. He parkoured away when they ran into him again. convinced Cricket to help teach Mac and Dennis a lesson, but was abandoned and left in a room with Mac and Dennis, who promptly tea-bagged him. In ' theory of who pooped Charlie and Frank's bed, she alleges that Frank had Cricket commit "fecal forgery" by imitating one of Charlie's "small, malnourished turds" so he could frame Charlie for pooping the bed. A version of the character called Colonel Cricket was present in , and ' creative re-telling of the birth of Paddy's Pub. here he is still well-groomed, and winds up getting his head blown off by a musket. Season Five Rickety Cricket is asked by The Gang to wrestle for them in a wrestling event put on by The Gang celebrating America and the troops. He appears under the name, "The Talibum", during which he hits Dee in the face with a chair and blows sand into both Dennis and Charlie's eyes. Frank then hits him with a trashcan and, by doing so, slashes his throat, the effects of which later being audibly evident in his later appearances. Season Six Frank asked Rickety to appear as a guest on Dennis and Dee's podcast. He tells about his life as a homeless person, and how stray dogs are trying to have sex with the hole in his neck (as a result of the injury he received in "The Gang Wrestles for the Troops") He states that he doesn't believe in God anymore, "not since that Chinaman stole my kidney." He also states that he is "over" Dee, "since I found out you are a whore", and he further insults her with Frank's encouragement. He later appears as one of the potential dads for Dee's baby. He can be seen smoking crack in the hospital waiting room. Season Seven When a hurricane was reportedly going to hit Philadelphia, Cricket sought shelter in the Y2K bunker in Paddy's basement. Because Frank and Dee were on edge, they shot him in the hand, thinking he was a looter. He refused to go to the hospital because "they euthanize the homeless" but as he lost blood they decided to drive him there. Dee and Frank left him in the car as they went inside a store to pick up Charlie, Dennis, Mac, and the storm supplies but Cricket climbed into the drivers seat and drove the Cadillac into the store. Cricket attends his high school reunion, where he is clean shaven and claims to have reentered the priesthood. He forgives Dee for what she did to him, and forgives the "cool kids" for being rude to him in high school. Later in the night, people start to notice that their jewelry is missing. Tim Murphy notices a necklace in Cricket's shirt, and then Adriano Calvanese rips his shirt off, revealing the stolen jewelry and that Cricket also has severe ringworm. The "cool kids" drag him out to the parking lot. Season Eight ]] Cricket is working (and apparently living) in a dog pound. He has a very nasty looking scar over his left eye, which he says he got in a "skirmish" with a stray chocolate lab, adding, "I won't get into details, but suffice it to say that dog is very paralyzed now." He says he's doing "community service" (presumably for paralyzing the dog) at the pound now. He calls himself a "dog executioner", but it turns out that he's more of a dog janitor, cleaning shit out of the dogs' cages. He tells and that he sold the German Shepherd painting that they are seeking to a dentist who was mourning the death of his own dog. Later, he allows and watch one of the dogs be put down so that they can see what it is like to watch something die, to help them decide what to do with Pop-Pop. Cricket lets them pick the dog that will get put down, and then puts himself in one of the cages and begs them to put HIM down ("I deserve it"). Dee and Dennis load all the dogs, and Cricket, into Dennis' Range Rover and release them all out into the street, where Dee says that they can all die "as nature intended, slowly and painfully." Season Nine ]] Rickety Cricket shows up uninvited to The Gang's Thanksgiving dinner, because he heard that they would be "squashing beefs" at the dinner (though The Gang can't imagine what sort of "beef" he would have with them.) They try to get Rickety to give them one of his eyes to make up for Liam getting his eye eaten at his wedding, which Liam blames The Gang for. Later, when a food fight breaks out, Liam throws a hatchet which hits Cricket in the arm. Later, after The Gang has sealed the rest of their dinner guests in the burning apartment, we hear a window break and everyone escaping through a window -- except for Cricket, who we still hear yelling for help. Season Ten ]] When Mac & Charlie's old high school friend Psycho Pete shows up at the bar showing remorse for his past, they enlist Cricket to hear his confession to absolve him of his guilt. Cricket's face is very badly burned as a result of the Thanksgiving incident, which the gang has no memory of him being at. He offers to have oral or anal sex in exchange for a 6-pack of beer or crack. Cricket appears in a video played for the Reynolds during the show "Family Fight". The host and the audience is horrified by his burned appearance. Season Eleven "]] When Mac tries to demonstrate that modern art is a scam by selling Charlie's art he enlists Cricket to act as the tormented artist. All of Charlie's drawings feature depictions of the time Cricket was in a foursome with three stray dogs. Notes * One recurring theme in the series is Cricket's downward spiral: in his first appearance, he is a priest; after quitting this, he is reduced to begging on the streets. He is used by The Gang to sell cocaine for the Mob and he has his legs broken after Dennis scapegoats him - after this, he carries a vendetta against The Gang. After Frank hits him with a trashcan, he has a wound in his neck which gets infected and prevents him from speaking normally (but is quite attractive to dogs). He is later shot in the hand by Frank, and has contracted severe ringworm when he attends his high school reunion. He also seems to have become a kleptomaniac even after returning to being a priest, having stolen everyone's jewelry at the reunion and screaming "I have sinned!" when his thefts were discovered. He got into a skirmish with a dog which left him with a scar across his left eye leaving him blind in it. He attended The Gang's "squashing of their beefs" and got a hatchet thrown at him by Liam McPoyle. He is trapped inside Dennis and Mac's apartment when it catches fire, and while he survives the fire, it's revealed that his face is horribly scarred. * A running gag on the show is that most characters (most regularly The Gang) refer to Cricket as "street-rat" even though he seems to take great offense to it. They continued to call him so even after he claimed to have gotten clean and became a priest again. * In Cricket's first appearances, he harbors an unrequited love for , which she uses to manipulate him (and it's said that she's been doing that since they were all in ). However, in the episode "Mac's Big Break", Cricket declares that he is "over her", calls her a whore, and since then, he doesn't appear to have any further interest in her. * The Gang—especially Mac and Charlie—often greet Cricket with a sort of spastic little dance, accompanied by a high-pitched imitation of a cricket's chirping. Cricket does not seem to enjoy it. * The Gang seems to feel no sense of responsibility for what has happened to Cricket. In The Gang Squashes Their Beefs, everyone in the Gang seems to be mystified as to what sort of "beef" he could possibly have with them. In "Psycho Pete Returns", they don't even remember him being at the Thanksgiving dinner, even though his horrible scars make it clear he was indeed there. * Humorously enough, Cricket is one of the more amicable enemies the Gang has, despite him having arguably the most justified reason to despise them. He is even willing at times to be an ally in their schemes, though he still has his dignity and requires up to a full sixer to be coaxed into plans. * As of now, season 11 is the only season where no physical harm happens to Cricket since his initial appearance in season 2. We do hear that a cat has bitten off one of his toes, however. * Oddly, in The Gang Wrestles for the Troops, Cricket appears much more cleaned up than he did in season 4, and is smoking with a group of other homeless people. After this episode, he goes back to his filthy look in season 6. Appearances * : The Gang Exploits A Miracle * : The Gang Gets Whacked (Part 2), The Gang Dances Their Asses Off * : Mac and Dennis: Manhunters, Who Pooped the Bed?, The Gang Cracks the Liberty Bell (as "Col. Cricket") * : The Gang Wrestles for the Troops * : Mac's Big Break, Dee Gives Birth * : The Storm of the Century, The High School Reunion * : Pop-Pop: The Final Solution * : The Gang Squashes Their Beefs * : Psycho Pete Returns, The Gang Goes on Family Fight * : Dee Made a Smut Film Category:It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Characters Category:Recurring characters Category:Season 2 characters Category:Season 3 characters Category:Season 4 characters Category:Season 5 characters Category:Season 6 characters Category:Season 7 characters Category:Season 8 characters Category:Season 9 characters Category:Season 10 characters Category:Season 11 characters Category:Enemies